You're walking through the grocery store and you take a nasty spill in the pasta aisle. Seems a puddle of alfredo sauce was hidden within the white linoleum floor. You have a sharp pain in your knee and cuts on your arm that will likely require stitches. Who could be responsible for this? The grocery store? The manager or some other employee? And how are you going to prove that they're liable? Almost every personal injury case revolves around the idea of negligence and fault, and this article details about how courts determine those issues.
The basic question in every negligence case is whether the defendant acted as a reasonable person would have in similar circumstances. If a child is suing a parent, the defendant's actions are compared to what a jury believes a reasonable parent would have done. If a patient sues a doctor, the jury will compare the doctor's actions to standards in the medical community. In a car crash case, negligence may be proven if the defendant was not obeying traffic laws, and does not have an excuse for violating those laws.
A negligence case is usually proven through one of two types of evidence: direct evidence and circumstantial evidence. Evidence derived from the personal knowledge of a witness or from images in a photograph or video constitutes direct evidence. Circumstantial evidence, by comparison, requires a fact-finder to draw an inference based on the evidence that has been produced.
Courts have formulated special rules that govern proof in specific types of negligence cases. Negligence in a dog bite case is proven in a different way than negligence in a medical malpractice case. In a slip-and-fall case, for instance, where a plaintiff's injury occurs when the plaintiff slips and falls due to a condition on the defendant's property, courts require the plaintiff to prove that the condition existed for such a length of time that the defendant should have discovered and remedied the condition. Thus, a plaintiff who sues a supermarket when she slips on spilled liquid laundry soap could not recover from the supermarket without showing that the liquid had been on the floor long enough for the supermarket to have discovered it. Evidence that the soap was smeared across the floor due to the number of customers walking on the liquid may be sufficient proof in this type of case.
A plaintiff in some instances may rely on the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, which is Latin for "the thing speaks for itself." This type of theory allows a jury in a negligence case to infer that a defendant acted negligently, even without other proof of misconduct. In order for this doctrine to apply, the plaintiff must prove that the event that occurred usually does not happen in the absence of negligence and that the defendant had exclusive control of the instrument that caused injury.
For example, a child who was injured by the bag of grain on a public sidewalk in front of a grain producer may not have any direct or circumstantial proof that the producer was negligent in handling the bag. However, a bag of grain typically does not fly onto a public sidewalk in the absence of negligence, and the producer presumably had exclusive control over the bag at the time of the accident. In this instance, the jury may be able to infer negligence on the part of the defendant under res ipsa loquitur.
A negligence case may seem cut and dried to the layman, but these lawsuits can prove complex with varying degrees of fault to be distributed. If you'd like to know more about proving negligence, or if you have questions about how negligence applies in your specific case, you should consult with an injury attorney in your area.
